ABSTRACT Background: Essential Newborn Care is the care given to the newborn infant following birth within the delivery room by skilled personnel. Immediate proper care of newborn is important for survival, growth and development of a newborn. In spite of its essentiality, most health care professionals do not follow the recommendation. Therefore, this study sought to identify these gaps on knowledge of immediate new born care. Objective: To assess knowledge on essential newborn care and associated factors among nurses and midwives working in maternal and child health case team at public health facilities of Wolayta Zone, SNNPR, Ethiopia, 2019. Methods: Institution based cross sectional study design was conducted from March-April, 2019. Data was collected by using pretested questionnaire and 36 public health facilities were selected using simple random sampling technique. All 218 nurses and midwives who were working in the delivery unit from selected facilities were included in the study. The collected data was entered into Epi data 3.02 and exported to SPSS version 22 for analysis. The results arepresented using frequency, proportions and summary statistics table. Statistically significant variables in the final model were declared with 95% CI, AOR and p-value ≤ 0.05. RESULT: The response rate was 99.1%. From participants in this study, (57.9%) had good knowledge on newborn care. The Field of study, educational level, interest to work in delivery room and presence of guidelines were factors significantly associated with knowledge on essential newborn care. Conclusion and recommendation: The study participants had poor knowledge on some components of essential newborn careHence, staff motivation; provision of continuous education, close supervision, providing required equipment and supplies were recommended to facility managers, midwife and nursing director, MCH department head, Non-Governmental Organizations working on maternal and Child health, Zonal health department and Woreda health office.

Keywords: Neonates, Essential newborn care, Newborn care